Dilbert's Hell

[Johnny Pneumatic]

The New Jerusalem heavenly city described in the New Testament is described as going to be 1,500 miles on a side. This can be either a giant cube or pyramid. Either way my following argument still stands:

Take a globe, create a scale model of the heavenly city and hold it onto the globe. See the problem? The city's 12 gates would be many, many miles in the air; maybe even above Earth's atmosphere. This means the Earth has to be flat to have the gates at ground level like the city is described as having. This means I found my own original flaw in the bible that I've seen nothing written about anywhere. Should I tell this flaw to the SAB and other skeptical/atheist places?

[jjramsey]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
The New Jerusalem heavenly city described in the New Testament is described as going to be 1,500 miles on a side. This can be either a giant cube or pyramid. Either way my following argument still stands:

Take a globe, create a scale model of the heavenly city and hold it onto the globe. See the problem? The city's 12 gates would be many, many miles in the air; maybe even above Earth's atmosphere. This means the Earth has to be flat to have the gates at ground level like the city is described as having. This means I found my own original flaw in the bible that I've seen nothing written about anywhere.

You've probably seen nothing about it anywhere because it is pretty pointless to take most stuff in Revelation literally. Don't get too excited.

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
Should I tell this flaw to the SAB and other skeptical/atheist places?

Well, it wouldn't make the SAB much shoddier than it already is.

Seriously, try looking at Bible commentaries by moderate or liberal scholars (that is, the scholars who don't care about inerrancy or whether their conclusions are orthodox) before jumping to conclusions. There is a wealth of information that skeptical laypersons leave untapped because it is not part of atheist polemics. There is a reason my sig is what it is.

[jan]

Since when do Borg cubes land on planets?

Quote:

Revelation 21, 1
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more

So not impossible that the new earth is flat. Or has some bizarre non-euclidean geometry.

Note also:

Quote:

Revelation 21, 23
The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb.

Sounds more and more like a Borg cube.










Edited to add: Another possibility: the new earth is just very, very, VERY large. So it's more or less indistinguishable from a plane, if you look at a small part of it.

Why would you want to use one of those twelve gates anyway?

[RandFan]

Quote:

Originally posted by jan
Sounds more and more like a Borg cube.

You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

[c4ts]

The problems with Revelations are:
1. Everything is so heavily esoteric that it makes no sense on a literal level
2. I suspect the author was higher than a kite when he wrote it
3. It contradicts the NT by bringing back the vengeful OT God

The dimensions of the city and its number of gates are, I suspect, of numerological signifigance and not much else.

[jan]

Quote:

Originally posted by c4ts
The dimensions of the city and its number of gates are, I suspect, of numerological signifigance and not much else.

No need to just suspect it: it's quite clear in the text:

Quote:

Revelation 21, 12
It had a massive, high wall, with twelve gates where twelve angels were stationed and on which names were inscribed, (the names) of the twelve tribes of the Israelites.

The city has twelve gates, because there are twelve tribes.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Quote:

Originally posted by jjramsey
Seriously, try looking at Bible commentaries by moderate or liberal scholars (that is, the scholars who don't care about inerrancy or whether their conclusions are orthodox) before jumping to conclusions. There is a wealth of information that skeptical laypersons leave untapped because it is not part of atheist polemics. There is a reason my sig is what it is.

I've looked at commentaries by religious people; they make me sick as much as inerrancy apologists do.
What conclusions have I jumped to?
There is a wealth of apologetics, yes.
Ok. You'll note I don't like the flaws in the SAB either. I do my own thinking with what I read on there. Somebody should tell them about the SAB's flaws so they can be fixed. You won't do that though, will you? Nope, you'll just gripe about it, which will solve nothing.

[Taffer]

Why can't it be a Dodecagon instead of a cube, with each side the reqired length? This would solve the problem.

[c4ts]

Quote:

Originally posted by Taffer
Why can't it be a Dodecagon instead of a cube, with each side the reqired length? This would solve the problem.

Or you could just use non-Euclidian geometry.

[Nex]

Quote:

Originally posted by Taffer
Why can't it be a Dodecagon instead of a cube, with each side the reqired length? This would solve the problem.

Because Gawd wants a cube. Duh.

[jjramsey]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
I've looked at commentaries by religious people; they make me sick as much as inerrancy apologists do.

Ahem, I did not say "religious people," I said scholars. There are biblical scholars out there who are not religious, and there are scholars who, for whatever reason, check their religion at the door when they dissect Biblical texts. Those are the ones you should look for.

The Bible is a bunch of ancient texts. Having a Bible translation helps you get over the language hurdles, but it isn't sufficient to inform you about the cultural, historical and literary contexts of the Bible. That's why you need the scholars.

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
What conclusions have I jumped to?

You jumped to the conclusion that there was any point in taking the numbers in Revelation literally.

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
Somebody should tell them about the SAB's flaws so they can be fixed. You won't do that though, will you? Nope, you'll just gripe about it, which will solve nothing.

If I thought that the author of the SAB was interested in anything but cheap mockery, I might. However, the flaws I see aren't superficial, but indicative of shallow methodology and a lack of intellectual honesty. A couple examples:

From the SAB commentary on Leviticus 14:

Quote:

God's treatment for leprosy:
Get two birds. Kill one. Dip the live bird in the blood of the dead one. Sprinkle the blood on the leper seven times, and then let the blood-soaked bird fly away. Next find a lamb and kill it. Wipe some of its blood on the patient's right ear, thumb, and big toe. Sprinkle seven times with oil and wipe some of the oil on his right ear, thumb and big toe. Repeat. Finally find another pair of birds. Kill one and dip the live bird in the dead bird's blood. Wipe some blood on the patient's right ear, thumb, and big toe. Sprinkle the house with blood 7 times. That's all there is to it.

Yet it is very clear from Leviticus 14 that the above-mentioned ritual is performed after the leper has already been healed (Lev. 14:3), so it can hardly be construed as a treatment for leprosy. One has to read the Bible through a pretty distorted lens to get a reading of Leviticus that careless.

In Matthew 24:19, it reads "Woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days." The context is a prediction of the sacking of Jerusalem, with exhortations to flee to the hills as quickly as possible when it happens. Obviously, a pregnant or nursing woman has a harder time fleeing because of her extra burden. Verse 14:20 continues in the same vein, saying to "pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day." Winter is a slowdown for obvious reasons, and a Jew is only permitted to travel so far on a Sabbath day, which also impedes fleeing. So what is the SAB commentary about Matthew 24:19?:

Quote:

Why? Does God especially hate pregnant and nursing women?

This is just a snarky comment, and there is no sign of any attempt to actually understand the passage.

The above errors are not mere slips, but examples of an aggressive sloppiness of the kind one sees in creationists. I see no point in trying to correct the author of the SAB any more than I see a point in trying to correct Earl Doherty or Kent Hovind.

[Yahweh]

Quote:

Originally posted by jjramsey
Well, it wouldn't make the SAB much shoddier than it already is.

Have you considered writing something of your own annotated bible? (I'm sure there are dozens of similar annotated bibles, but hey, how many of those can you call your own.)

[jjramsey]

Quote:

Originally posted by Yahweh
Have you considered writing something of your own annotated bible? (I'm sure there are dozens of similar annotated bibles, but hey, how many of those can you call your own.)

I'd only be reinventing the wheel. Given a choice between an annotated Bible with annotations by the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) and an annotated Bible with annotations by me, I'd take the annotated Bible from the SBL any day, especially since in writing my annotations, I'd likely be using resources from the SBL anyway. And yes, there is such an annotated Bible, called the Harper-Collins Study Bible, and the annotations tend to come from the moderate to liberal end of biblical scholarship.

There is also the book The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible by Robin Lane Fox, and it is probably much more useful than any annotated Bible would be in pointing out problems in the Bible.

[Palimpsest]

Quote:

Originally posted by c4ts
Or you could just use non-Euclidian geometry.

Ohmygawd! That the New Jerusalem will be designed by the Old Ones?

[c4ts]

Quote:

Originally posted by Palimpsest
Ohmygawd! That the New Jerusalem will be designed by the Old Ones?

In non-euclidian geometry, a square on the surface of a sphere is still a square and it won't fly off the sides at the edges, since it is in a spherically curved space. Euclid's fifth postulate won't work if you use shapes on the surface of a sphere (and if you try to move triangles with the same angles into one another they don't match up!), which is why it's non-Euclidian.

But yeah, New Jerusalem will be intelligently designed by Daoloth, so you'll go mad just by looking at it.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Quote:

Originally posted by jjramsey
You jumped to the conclusion that there was any point in taking the numbers in Revelation literally.



If I thought that the author of the SAB was interested in anything but cheap mockery, I might. However, the flaws I see aren't superficial, but indicative of shallow methodology and a lack of intellectual honesty. A couple examples:

From the SAB commentary on Leviticus 14:



Yet it is very clear from Leviticus 14 that the above-mentioned ritual is performed after the leper has already been healed (Lev. 14:3), so it can hardly be construed as a treatment for leprosy. One has to read the Bible through a pretty distorted lens to get a reading of Leviticus that careless.

In Matthew 24:19, it reads "Woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days." The context is a prediction of the sacking of Jerusalem, with exhortations to flee to the hills as quickly as possible when it happens. Obviously, a pregnant or nursing woman has a harder time fleeing because of her extra burden. Verse 14:20 continues in the same vein, saying to "pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day." Winter is a slowdown for obvious reasons, and a Jew is only permitted to travel so far on a Sabbath day, which also impedes fleeing. So what is the SAB commentary about Matthew 24:19?:



This is just a snarky comment, and there is no sign of any attempt to actually understand the passage.

The above errors are not mere slips, but examples of an aggressive sloppiness of the kind one sees in creationists. I see no point in trying to correct the author of the SAB any more than I see a point in trying to correct Earl Doherty or Kent Hovind.

I also must be jumping to conclusions about the number of miles to a city as shown on a road sign. If a book says a person measured the physical dimentions of something and 1,500 miles(changed over from "cubits") is the dimentions; then how is taking the numbers literally a mistake on my part? The Bible means what it says.

You'll never know then. I agree your first example is bad, really bad. The second one I agree with; let me explain:

God is the one causing, or at the least, allowing these events to happen. If God is causing an event that is harder on women with child than other women or men then he is being hard on the women. God could do a miracle to help the women that have a belly full of baby, such as teleport them to where they need to go. The fact he causes or just allows the event and doesn't help the women shows he cares less about them than everyone else.

[TragicMonkey]

The twelve gates is a misreading of the original text. The Heavenly City will have twelve Gateses, as in Bill Gates, because in Heaven nothing is a sin, so cloning is allowed. These twelves Bill Gateses will ensure a continuing Microsoft domination in the afterlife. This is okay with God, because the constant crashes will stop people from visiting skeptical websites and pornography. True, they will also prevent people from visiting Rapture Ready, but all of those people will go to hell for daring to pretend to knowledge of God's designs. The Rapture was supposed to be a surprise party for Jesus, and the RR people spoiled the surprise. They'll have plenty of time, ie eternity, to contemplate their boorishness while resident in The Hell of Chocolate Rabbits*.





*What makes The Hell of Chocolate Rabbits a hell is that those rabbits aren't made of chocolate. Very far from being chocolate indeed.

Gross.

[chulbert]

What precludes the structure from being partially buried such that the doors are accessible?

[c4ts]

Quote:

Originally posted by chulbert
What precludes the structure from being partially buried such that the doors are accessible?

More importantly, why does anyone give a damn? It was written by someone who thought the Earth was flat because it looked flat. Can't blame them for not knowing about the Earth being round and not having any notion of the mathematical curviture of space. This is a guy who said a multi-horned beast was going to pop out of the sea when Emperor Nero returned to power and two-headed goats ran wild! So what if the city doesn't fit? It's symbolic like everything else in that book.

And don't most branches of Christianity consider Revelations apocrypal anyway?

[jjramsey]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
I also must be jumping to conclusions about the number of miles to a city as shown on a road sign. If a book says a person measured the physical dimentions of something and 1,500 miles(changed over from "cubits") is the dimentions; then how is taking the numbers literally a mistake on my part?

Because the book of Revelation is not a road sign. It is intentionally obscure and written in riddles.

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
The second one I agree with; let me explain:

God is the one causing, or at the least, allowing these events to happen. If God is causing an event that is harder on women with child than other women or men then he is being hard on the women. God could do a miracle to help the women that have a belly full of baby, such as teleport them to where they need to go. The fact he causes or just allows the event and doesn't help the women shows he cares less about them than everyone else.

If that is what the author of the SAB wants to say, then he should say it. There is no reason for him to be as murky and obtuse as Revelation. As it stands, all that is there in the SAB is just a snarky comment. Judging from the SAB commentary on Matthew 24:15 and 24:16, it looks the author of the SAB is only interested in heckling, not substantive critique.